The locality with a history of its own

There are three or rather four stories about the origin of this locality. If one speaks of an ancient village that existed here, another talks of an advocate who came on horseback here and set about founding this locality.

Two other stories about the founding of the locality are equally romantic. One says a temple lent its name to the locality, while another says a village by the same name existed here. The village was absorbed by the locality and it gave its name even as it lost its identity.

Today, this is among the oldest of Bangalore’s localities and it I also the most happening. It is also considered to be among the strongholds of Kannada and it boasts of several institutions of excellence and for decades it had been considered to be the hub of education.

This locality today is 124 years old and it was a gift to Bangaloreans by the Wodeyars to provide a good and habitable locality to Bangaloreans.

This is Malleswaram which came to be founded in 1889. One legend about the locality’s founding says that S. K. Venkatranga Iyengar, an advocate, was the one who was responsible for the coming up of Malleswaram.

Venkatranga Iyengar loved riding on horse back. One day when he  visited the Kadu Malleswara temple, he liked the surroundings and imagined a locality where the rich and noble could settle.

He invited the Patankars, who are descendents of the Dewans of Mysore as also Dewan Sheshadri Iyer and Dewan P.N. Krishnamurthy to plan their houses in the nee locality. They agreed s did the Patankars. These rich noblemen bought huge properties, each anything between 2 to 3 acres.

Venkatranga Iyengar then placed the proposal before the erstwhile municipality which approved the idea and thus was born Malleswaram.

However, the credit for being the earliest planned localities go to e Chamarajpet and Seshadripuram. This was in 1892. Though Malleshwaram and Basavanagudi too were planned as early as 1892, they could be executed only  in 1898 and then ‘with some urgency’ due to the intensity of the plague epidemics.
The then municipality acquired 291 acres for Malleshwaram and promoted it as a model hygienic suburb.

The then planning authorities paid attention to social hierarchies and so Malleshwaram had eight blocks, one for each particular section of the people.

Another story credits the founding of Malleswaram to H.V. Nanjundiah (1860-1920), the acting Dewan and  the first Vice-Chancellor of Mysore University. He was a contemporary of Sir M Visvesvaraiah.

He donated his palatial house in Malleswaram in 1948 to the Government for sting up a Girls High School. The building and the school exists to this day.  

Coming back to the story on Malleswaram, it was Nanjundiah, a Brahmin, who pushed or the formation of  the locality in 1898.

 extension around 1898 after the great plague in Bangalore, which prompted many people to move out of the city centre, while the other claims that the founder of the area was the first Vice Chancellor of the Mysore University and acting Dewan of Mysore, HV Nanjundaiah.

The third story says Malleswaram is named after the Kadu Malleswara temple. As the first name of the temple, Kadu, says the area was once a forest and it was constructed by the Marathas in the 17^th century.

Venkoji, a half-brother of Chattrapathi Shivaji and the son of Shahji Bhonsle, was instrumental in building this temple. Venkoji received the jagir of Bangalore on the death of his father, while Shivaji continued to reign from Pune.

An old inscription found on the outcrop of the temple refers to the grant given to Medaralingana village by Maratha Sardar Venkoji or Ekoji in 1669 for the upkeep of the temple.

The inscription cautions that no one should alter or attempt to change the grant given by Venkoji, including Hindus and Muslims. It clearly refers to various communities of the medieval period, including Muslims and Hindus.

Another story says the place where Malleswaram stands today was once a village called Mallapuram. The village made way for the then Mysore State and the Bangalore Municipality to construct Malleswaram and Basavanagudi. This was when K. Seshadri Iyer was the Dewan.

However, there is no vernacular or historical records before the 1880s support the claim of Mallapura village, There are, however, records to indicate that the area originally came under the village of Ranganatha Palya. An 1878 Survey of India map indicates this. This will buttress the story that just as Basavanagudi was named after the Basavanna temple, Malleswaram was named after the Kadu Mallikarjuna (Malleswara) temple.

Interestingly, both Basavanagudi and Malleswaram were planned  on foothills: If Basavanagudi lies on the foothills of the Bull Temple, Bugle Rock and Lal Bagh,  Malleswaram is on the foothills of the Kempe Gowda watchtower and Palace Guttahalli. Malleswaram was so planned that it had a big water source. A big stream, now a Raja Kaluve, ran through it and it was meant to provide temporary shelter during large epidemics (such as the plague) and during famine.

Though Malleswaram had eight blocks, it was originally planned to accommodate all communities. While previous layouts such as Chamarajpet or Benson Town accommodated particular sections of society according to their original plans, Malleswaram was to provide accommodation to all.

The new Malleswaram had separate wards for Muslims, native Christians and various Hindu castes, including Brahmins, Lingayats, Vaishyas and others.

Then Malleswaram stretched from the old Raja Mills or Mysore Spinning and Weaving Mills (today Mantri Mall stands in its place) to 15th Cross including Sankey Tank in the north, and from the Bangalore-Arasikere railway track in the west to the Kadu Malleswara temple in the east.

Although the new layout was created and the Government invited people to purchase sites and settle there, it was met with little or no  response. The Government then formed a committee comprising among others V.P. Madhav Rao, Mir Shaukat Ali and Rao Bahadur Arcot Srinivasachar and K. Srinivasa Rao to develop the new area in 1892.

By 1895, the committee handed over the layout to the city municipal authorities with certain suggestions, and from then onwards, Malleswaram took off. However, it remained an ordinary neighbourhood until after Independence, when those who worked in the government and the upper classes chose to live there. From a site for rehabilitation to a posh neighbourhood, it has today emerged as the place of Malls.

An engineering marvel that is fading

It is generally believed that the attempt to first dam the Arkavathy river at Hesarghatta was made in 1894  and the then Dewan of Mysore State, Seshadri Iyer, is credited with the feat along with the Chief Engineer Hutchins.

However, this is not entirely true. While it can be accepted without hesitation and any doubt that it was in 1894 that the first modern water supply system came into existence, what stands to reason is that this certainly is not the first dam in Hesarghatta.

Way back in 1532 AD, the then Vijayanagar Emperor, Achuta Devaraya had constructed a check dam across the Arkavathy in Hesarghatta. The check dam was built for two reasons-to provide drinking water to the local populace and also to irrigate fields.

Over the centuries, the check dam lost out and by the 19^th century, very little of it remained. By then, Bangalore had emerged as a much bigger city and it continued to flourish while Hesarghatta and its neighbourhood went into steady decline.

It was Seshadri Iyer who hit upon the idea of daming the Arkavathy at Hesarghatta and he enlisted the services of Hutchins who designed the reservoir.

The dam and the reservoir was then the most modern water supply system in the then Mysore state and even in south India. Even today, you can see the siphon which only came into play when the reservoir was full. The siphon would empty excess water from the damed structure.

Old timers of Hesarghatta village and even surrounding villages remember the swishing sound that the siphon would make when it scooped out water. The sound could be heard for miles but today it is silent and stands a mute testimony to the engineering skills of the bygone days.

The Hesaraghatta dam had a storage capacity of 997 million cubic feet and used to supply water to Bangalore. The reservoir today  does not have water but the dam still has equipments and engineering instruments that still work. Some of them have rusted and unfortunately, nobody seems to care.

When you came down from the dam, you will find a brick aqueduct giving you company for some time when you travel on the road. This is the very structure that brought water from Hessarghatta to Turubanhalli. Here at Turubanahalli, Hutchins had installed a steam engine imported from the U.K. which lifted water to a reservoir in Jalahalli.

The water would then flow into the jewel filters at Malleswaram and then be piped into Bangalore. The steam engines are still there and the brick aqueduct too is still standing.

The aqueduct that runs from the reservoir spreads across 3,000-odd acres. It is a U-type channel having five layers of bricks, and two layers of granite to prevent seepage or leakage of water.

Why not declare the water works as a heritage construction and make it a tourist attraction. As it is Hesarghatta sees many tourists and people visiting the many institutions around the dry lake.

The birds on the dry lake bed attract hundreds of bird watchers and the nearby Nrithyagram have always pulled in people who love dance. The sole peacock sanctuary of Bangalore is nestled close to the lake.

The Horticulture Research station is worth a visit.

Why not preserve the water works as a standing example of engineering skill

Hutchins and Hesarghatta

Bangalore is fortunate in the sense that many of the roads and localities still bear the name of persons who lived and worked for the development of the city and its surroundings.

Many of then are either are British or of British origin and a fee like Krumbeigal are German. One such person is Hutchins in whose honor a road is named in Bangalore,

The Hutchins road is perpendicular to Pottery road and is in Banaswadi. This road was in honor of the person who was responsible for the construction of the Hesarghatta lake in Bangalore more than a hundred years ago.

The Hesarghatta lake is a manmade reservoir located 18 km to the north-west of Bangalore city. The lake was created by Hutchins in 1894 across the Arkavathy river to meet the drinking water needs of the city.

It was the then Dewan of Mysore, Sir K. Seshadri Iyer, who conceived the idea of providing the growing city of Bangalore with a  permanent source of drinking water.

The then chief engineer of Mysore State was M. C. Hutchins. Both Iyer and Hutchins planned the Chamarajendra Water Works as a reservoir to store three-years' water supply to Bangalore.

This is how Hesarghatta lake was born and it catered to the needs of the people till the mid 1900s.

Hutchins chose Hesarghatta after surveying several places in and around Bangalore, he zeroed in on Hesarghatta because it was ideally located.

Hesarghatta was located on the banks of the Arkavati, whose origin is in Nandi Hills and joins the Cauvery at Sangam near Mekudatu.

The lake comprises a dam which is an earthen bund, 40.55 metres in height and with a storage capacity of 997 mcft. The project cost:  Rs 20,78,641: incredible is it not.

A brick aqueduct brought water from the Hesarghatta to Turabanahalli. The water here was filtered and chlorinated. It was then sent to Soladevanahalli reservoir from where steam pumps were pumped water to Chimney Hills.

Water from the Chimney Hills flowed  to the Jewel Filters at Malleswaram and was then distributed to the entire city.

Water from Hesarghatta was pumped into homes in both City and Civil and Military Station (Cantonment) in mid 1896. Until the Tippagondanahalli (TG Halli) tank was constructed in 1933, Hesarghatta continued to be the main source.

The reservoir and dam supplied 36 million litres of water every day to the then Bangalore city.

Even today, we can find Hume pipes on the road to Hesarghatta. The pumping station at Soledevanahalli too is still standing, a mute testimony to the engineering skills of a bygone era.
Until the first Cauvery water supply project was commissioned in 1974, Hesarghatta reservoir and Tippagondanahalli dam (TG Halli dam) were the main source of water for Bangalore.

The water supply scheme worked perfectly from 1894 to 1933. Then the problems began. The water levels began steadily dipping and the catchment area decreased and in 1986, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board stopped using water from the Hesarghatta reservoir to meet demands of the city.

Today, the reservoir is bone dry and residents of villages around the lake have to rely on water supplied by tankers. What an irony.
Experts say that Bangalore would have been spared its water woes  had the catchment area been kept alive.

Today, the channels leading to the lake and even the catchment area has been encroached. Apart from Hesarghatta, more than one hundred smaller tanks on the course of Arkavathy have run dry.  Bangalore now depends only on Cauvery and TG Halli for its water needs.

However, the vast grasslands of the lake and its tank bed are him to nearly 150 species of birds and small animals.

Today, the residents of  Bangalore have forgotten both the Hessarghatta tank and the man behind its construction. The road too is known by the name and very few people are aware of the Hutchins who designed Bangalore’s first modern water supply system.    

Hutchins Road today lies  east of city centre and it still possesses a few quaint British style bungalows. It is also one of the major roads of Cooke Town.

The last I read of this road was really ironical. More than 50 houses on this road were left with no water supply for more than an year. This was unbelievable but true. Imagine, residents of the area after whom Bangalore’s first water works were named had to suffer such a shortage.

The funny thing is that all the fifty houses were being regularly sent water bills though there was no water supply. This is the best example of shining India.